How does a kid naviage the cutthroat world of hot sauce?

June 4, 2012 6:53 AM

Advice for a 10-year-old who wants to be a hot sauce mogul?

My son wants to run a Summer business making and selling hot sauce. I feel like this is a great learning opportunity but I'm not really sure where to start. He wants to make, label and sell at the farmers market. Obviously we need to look into labeling requirements and talk to the farmers market organizers. I don't exactly have a head for business - what I'm looking for is any advice or suggestions to help him be as successful as possible.

posted by Perthuz to Grab Bag (22 answers total)

Best answer: Awesome! That is great. I'm all about entrepreneurs.

First of all, you'll probably need a business license, and then you'll need to understand what you need to be able to produce this hot sauce in your kitchen. Will you need to have it bottled off-site to comply with health codes? Here's the SBA's site regarding this topic, you might want to check it out.

Another resource is Junior Achievement.

One thing I'd recommend is to show your son how much these things will cost, write up a plan and then have different actions that need to be executed so that he can do his sales.

I'd also recommend a website, very inexpensive and very useful.

This is a chance for the both of you to learn about starting a business, setting and achieving goals and all of the boring stuff it takes to actually realize a dream.
posted by Ruthless Bunny at 7:00 AM on June 4, 2012 [2 favorites]

Best answer: Has he ever made hot sauce before? I would start there. Also, if this came out of a "one time we made hot sauce and it was fun" sort of experience, does he get the whole part where you have to keep doing it over and over, even if you don't feel like it or it stops being fun?

What about having him talk to a seller at your local farmer's market who does something like this? They could probably tell both of you what's required, what the pitfalls are, etc.
posted by Sara C. at 7:02 AM on June 4, 2012

Best answer: I made a gallon or so of hot sauce last fall. It was great. I suggest goggles and rubber gloves. I took a bunch of peppers and ran them in a blender with vinegar. We used white vinegar and cider vinegar from the health food store. I had some 8oz bottles with shaker tops just like tabasco left over from a bitters making project. The sauce was too coarse to go through the shaker top so we left those off.

It was not hard to make some absolutely great hot sauce. One of the best batches resulted from charring the peppers' skins on the grill beforehand.
posted by bdc34 at 7:08 AM on June 4, 2012

Best answer: A good place to start might be with hot pepper jelly. It's fairly easy to put together and can be canned with a hot-bath process. Our friend's daughter made some to sell at the local farmer's market and she unloaded every jar. They happened to be growing their own peppers and had a big surplus; if you're not growing your own you'll need to source hot peppers from somewhere.

Get a copy of the Bell Blue Book for the lowdown on the canning process (do's, don'ts, recipes, etc).
posted by jquinby at 7:11 AM on June 4, 2012

Best answer: You could talk with the local Chamber of Commerce, then tend to have some involvement with the Farmer's Markets and might be able to find a mentor that can help.

Good luck!
posted by Argyle at 7:12 AM on June 4, 2012

Best answer: Oh - and in addition to the local Chamber, your local Extension office can probably hook you up with information as well.
posted by jquinby at 7:14 AM on June 4, 2012

Best answer: Check out the Northern Colorado Food Incubator, that's just the sort of thing they help with.
posted by Floydd at 7:20 AM on June 4, 2012

Best answer: My advice...Heat without flavor is a big mistake. Uniformly, the hot sauces I use most are the ones with a tasty flavor component. It might be subtle, but there's always a unique flavor backing-up the burn.

Awesome idea, btw. Good luck!
Any chance for mail-order at the usual MeFi discount?
posted by Thorzdad at 7:20 AM on June 4, 2012 [1 favorite]

Best answer: Depending on your state regulations, you may need make the hot sauce in a commercial kitchen in order to resell to general public.

I thin this is awesome idea but barrier to entry may be higher than expected.
posted by countrymod at 7:24 AM on June 4, 2012 [4 favorites]

Best answer: I'd say you want to have him, or help him, produce a business plan. In his case, probably just a budget detailing what he'll need to spend, what he will charge, and, crucially, accounting for his time.

Depending on your state regulations, you may need make the hot sauce in a commercial kitchen in order to resell to general public.

Some communities have communal commercial kitchens that you can rent out. If not, I would see if there is a business in your area that would be able to rent their kitchen out.
posted by OmieWise at 7:27 AM on June 4, 2012 [4 favorites]

Best answer: Tweet at my cousins @mcclurespickles -- they started their pickling business as kids and now they're pretty big - selling at Whole Foods, William Sonoma, etc. And they'd probably be willing to chat. You can tell them that cousin Katy sent you.
posted by k8t at 7:37 AM on June 4, 2012 [8 favorites]

Best answer: He will have to get it made in an inspected kitchen and make sure the labels have all the relevant information. He will also need product liability insurance.. Colorado has a Cottage Food Act that makes this a but easier, but you can't just whip up a gallon at home and sell it.
posted by Ideefixe at 7:54 AM on June 4, 2012

Response by poster: Thanks for the answers so far, everyone! It looks like this is going to be a bit tougher than I thought. We live near the CSU Extension office so we'll probably start there. Also, I apologize for the horrible typo in the title.
posted by Perthuz at 8:05 AM on June 4, 2012

Best answer: And in case he makes it big, take lots of photos.

Here are some pix of my cousins pickling as kids.
posted by k8t at 8:08 AM on June 4, 2012 [1 favorite]

Best answer: Depending on the size and nature of your farmers' market you may need to apply for and be granted membership, which may involve a jurying process. Or, you may just be able to show up. Good idea to check first so you aren't all ready to go and find out there's no room at the inn. Smaller, lower traffic markets are usually a lot more informal, and less expensive. If it turns out to be more than just a summer fad, consider school and church bazaars, which are generally more in the autumn, holiday seasons.

Good luck to your son, and you. Help him remember that success won't be likely to suddenly appear. You need to keep doing it at the markets. Reliable attendance is a major factor, obviously together with a good product.
posted by uncaken at 8:18 AM on June 4, 2012

Best answer: In my area there are several places that are willing to rent out their commercial kitchen for small operations. Including, when we lived out in a little... well... town would be over-stating it, as we lacked both a gas station and a bar (the latter was in the next burgh over)... in rural western Marin, the local deli/general store. Find a place with a commercial kitchen, that could be a deli that has slack time in the afternoons, and ask them what it'd take for a young man to use their kitchen to do supervised food prep. If they're a community minded organization (they're running a store in a small town, it's hard to not be) and he makes the approach, those costs may be deferred and they'll probably carry his product.

I love the Extension office idea, our local 4H coordinator is all over projects like this (and 4H probably has other leads that could be useful).

Beyond the capital costs of setting up the operation (bottles, consumables), the expensive part about a business license in my current town was the planning department permit. The license itself costs a few tens of dollars a year, the planning permit was a few hundred. As you're looking around at commercial kitchen space you might see if any of them are in jurisdictions that might make a better (ie: cheaper to get your licenses set up) mailing address than your home.

And, yeah, a lot of this seems like too much for a 10 year old, but I'll present a counter: If you spend a couple of hundred bucks to take him through this process now then he'll see that yeah, there are a lot of steps and a lot of costs, but it's navigable.
posted by straw at 8:20 AM on June 4, 2012

Best answer: Depending on the requirements/regulations, a lot of churches and schools will have an appropriately inspected kitchen that you can probably rent time in to do this.
posted by piedmont at 10:20 AM on June 4, 2012

Best answer: What a great learning opportunity all around. Math, problem solving, "people reading", marketing, imagination, follow-through, etc.

Just think of it as cheaper than summer camp!

I came in here to suggest renting a commercial kitchen too.

Or - find someone who is already selling pepper jelly and the like, and ask if your son can do a "weekend tutorial" of some kind, where they go through the steps to make their own product. Maybe they'd even like to help him make the hot sauce, and brand it with his name, and sell through their regular channels. It's a good start.

Finally...really consider doing this without being as intensive. Why not research some recipes, order some glass bottles yourselves, have someone on Etsy design and print out 30 waterproof labels, and call them gifts for friends and family? Here's a ready-made set with 24 bottles. He doesn't have to go from helping in the kitchen to hot sauce mogul overnight. They'd look like fantastic little gifts and I can't imagine that he'd be dissappointed in that result. Here are some DIY print out labels too!

You could do that from start to finish in a few weeks, and see if the interest is still there.
posted by barnone at 11:36 AM on June 4, 2012 [1 favorite]

Best answer: I see you're in Fort Collins.

A few years ago, several guys got together and made a commercially licensed kitchen, and they each started a hot sauce company. See if you can drop by the farmers markets (there's several in town), and see if you can chat with one and see how they got setup. You may just be able to rent out the space. (or, if you play the kid card, get it free?).

MeMail me once these get made, I'd be happy to buy a few!
posted by cschneid at 12:21 PM on June 4, 2012 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: Thanks everyone for for your thoughts and advice! The boy has done small batches of similar foods here and there, but nothing large-scale. We talked about it last night and he read quite a bit of this thread. We're going to do a couple big (gallon+) test batches to share with family and friends, and once he feels like he's got some good repeatable recipes under his belt, we'll investigate business licensing etc. It sounds like it's best to go slowly and carefully. Fortunately we have a Winter market here, so this doesn't have to end when Summer does!
posted by Perthuz at 9:19 AM on June 5, 2012

Response by poster: Since all the answers here are really excellent advice, I just marked everything 'best'. I realize it's not a popular thing to do, but by any measure the entire thread is incredibly useful to us.
posted by Perthuz at 9:25 AM on June 5, 2012

Oh, and: This is neighborhood dependent, but when school's out my neighborhood sprouts lemonade stands. You know those kids don't have business licenses or health department permits. If a neighbor kid (that I know to be a neighbor kid, not some magazine sales scam artist) popped up selling hot sauce, I'd buy a bottle. Health department and business license or no.

No reason he can't be hitting up those family and friends for a few bucks a bottle.
posted by straw at 10:09 AM on June 5, 2012